On the way to the convention center with the Challenger career fair, Max pulled up the notification window he’d gotten about his new Path.

  [Direct Conduit Cleric Path]

  You not only merely channel divine energy, a divine entity lives in you or with you. There is no delay, no necessary permission to use your sponsor’s divine power.

  Max shook his head. His world view had changed. Abruptly. He’d thought a three-Path Challenger was the most that was possible, that he was already as big a freak of nature as possible. He was wrong.

  Of course, the reason he was now a four-Path challenger was less about himself and more because Anansi was using him as an incubator, or halfway-house. It was more based on circumstances than any skill or talent that Max had.

  He shook his head.

  Now he had even more abilities to play with and somehow tie together. He desperately needed serious training time. The Quartet hadn’t exactly been fun, but at least he’d had time to train his body, mana, and mind.

  He slowed as he got closer to his destination. The convention center was a circus.

  Streams of people walked down both sides of the road. The surrounding parking lots were full, and still, streams of cars crawled down the street bumper to bumper. At first, Max was highly confused. Even though the Challenger job fair only happened once or twice a year in this city, he still wouldn't have predicted that the venue would be so packed.

  Hey, Lavinia, he said mentally.

  It turned out she seemed to be thinking the same thing he was. There are a lot more people here than we expected, huh?

  For sure. Do you think that you and your spirits can figure out why?

  Maybe. Probably. It’ll take my concentration but we'll just go eavesdrop on some conversations for a few minutes. With that, her presence in his mind vanished.

  In order to not be too passive and let his spirits do all the information gathering, Max walked up to a group of people nearby—a middle-aged couple and two kids. The man was fussing at one of the kids while Max wondered up. He was saying, “It's the Champion job fair. Of course, it's packed. The man scoffed.

  Then the woman gave her son his full attention and said, "Why didn't you tell us that..."

  Looks like a family argument. Max turned and kept walking.

  Luckily, he found a stranger who looked a bit more likely to answer some questions as he got closer to the convention building. A young man, or maybe a teen boy, dressed in bright colors was looking at something on his phone while walking slowly..

  "Excuse me," Max said.

  "Oh hey, what's up?" The young man had red hair and friendly eyes.

  "I was just wondering why this venue is so crowded. I know that it's the Champion job fair, but I thought it would be kind of a low-key thing, you know?"

  The man’s eyes lit up in sudden delight. "Are you a Champion?"

  "Yes, I am," said Max.

  "Oh, cool! Well, I guess you might not know about all this if you're a Returner, right?"

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  "Yeah, I didn't get back very long ago."

  "Oh, that's super rad." He extended his hand. "Name's Andy. It's awesome to meet a returner in person."

  "Uh, Max."

  They shook hands, and then Andy said, "Well, it's kind of simple when you think about the fact that Champions are basically the world's greatest entertainment now, or at least the world's biggest celebrities. Not all Champions have streams or do promotions or sponsorships, but a lot do. So for a lot of people, this place is like a fan convention. On top of that, it's sort of open to the public."

  "What do you mean by 'sort of'?" asked Max.

  "All the Challengers get name tags inside the buildings, like lanyards, and one of the the biggest rooms in the building are converted to sort of like the recruitment tables. A lot of people like to watch. And over the past three years, since so many people come, now the other ballrooms have people selling merch and things like that. Dealer rooms. So the people owning the venue, I guess, make more money from it."

  Max was shocked. "So the recruiting event really is basically a full-blown convention?"

  "Basically," said Andy. "And it's just really cool to see all the Challengers, you know? Not only that, Challengers are superhumans, like super heroes, and there will be a lot of them here, even from the guilds. That means for today, here, nobody really has to worry about monsters or security stuff. A bunch of Challengers are bulletproof. Can you imagine some dumbass pulling a knife or something?" He laughed. "What's your rank, Max?"

  Max scratched the back of his head, suddenly feeling a little awkward. He said, "I just tested a few days ago, and they gave me C-Rank."

  Andy's eyes lit up even more than before. "C-Rank, right out of the Agency facility? Oh wow, you must be a real up-and-comerQ"

  At that moment, Max recognized that there was definitely a new culture on the planet built around Challenger fascination. He had a feeling that if he didn't get away now, Andy was going to stick to him like glue.

  "Thanks for all the answers," Max said. Then he turned and lept away farther and faster than any normal person could before speed walking away. A handful of people saw, but like in most crowds, people in general could be very oblivious when they were trying to get somewhere. Those who had seen him didn't get a chance to catch up or even point him out because he was already lost in the crowd.

  A minute later, Lavinia showed up in his head again. I left one of my spirits with you, so I’m caught up already. It sounds like you already got a pretty good idea of why this place has so many people. But what you might not know is that these sorts of job fairs are kind of like dick-measuring contests for the different challenger guilds too.

  "What do you mean?"

  Well, historically, some have given press conferences during job fairs like this, or publicly talked shit or even issued challenges to each other. Apparently, a lot of the big guilds do their business at functions like this too.

  How many of these freaking things are there in a year? Max asked.

  Not super sure, but apparently kind of like the convention circuit back when you were on Earth, just a few more of them. Like each general area of the United States has one or two a year.

  Max slowly nodded. Okay, well, thanks for finding these answers. I guess we're about to find out first hand what this is all about then.

  Once he got in the building, Max joined a very short line that was clearly labeled 'Challengers Only'. As soon as he stepped into the line, it felt like all the people around him turned to stare at his retreating back in curiosity.

  Once Max made it to the front, reaching a desk, a bored-looking woman, who was wearing scrubs for some reason, held out a hand and said, "Let me see your agency ID, please."

  Max handed it over, and she scrutinized it carefully–her eyes glowed for a second. Then she handed it back as she chewed gum and gave Max a lanyard. Next, she gave him a sticker that she pulled from a sheet.

  "Go ahead and put this on your lanyard,darling," she said.

  Max read it. It had his name and his rank. “Where did you get this information?”

  “The local Agency office gave us a list of new Returners since we figure most of them will come here.”

  "Isn't this a violation of privacy?" he asked. Nobody had told him that they were going to print his name off or that he would be wearing his real name and rank like this.

  The woman shrugged. "If you don't like it, just don't put your sticker on the badge. Just keep it in your pocket in case security or staff wants to see it."

  Max almost asked why he would need to do that when he already had his agency ID, but he sucked up his irritation, nodded, and left the line.

  In the interior of the building, after walking down a hallway and following signs, he found himself in a large open room that had been converted to a convention floor of sorts. But instead of rows of tables down the middle like he expected, like the dealer room would likely look like down the hall, there were fewer tables situated in clumps, mostly in the corners, but also in a few places against the wall.

  Just like outside the building, there were two different lines; a large line and a much smaller line that said, “Challengers here!”

  The moment he walked in with his badge showing, a man in a suit approached. As the brightly-badged man got closer, Max glanced around, verifying that the people in the other line were the general public, all of whom had paid at the door. Basically just looky-loos.

  However, the well-dressed people with a “staff” badges seemed to be welcoming the actual Challengers like Max.

  The staff member nodded in greeting when he was close enough to speak. "Hello, Challenger. Have you been to a Challenger job fair before?"

  "No," said Max.

  "Well, I think you're going to enjoy it. As you can see, there are tables all around the room where all the different guilds that wanted to attend are represented. As you can imagine, they would all like new Challengers to visit them. So in order to incentivize that, every time you visit a table and show the name tag that you got before entering, they will write your name on a list, give you a monetary gift, and enter your name into a raffle for a powerful piece of armor or a weapon."

  "They’ll pay me? How much?"

  "It varies per table. And, for the larger guilds, it also can vary per rank. For instance, a D rank Challenger might get a gift that is enough for a nice meal, but a B or an A rank might get enough for a car. Circumstances can affect the gift, too."

  "Interesting," said Max. "But the raffle is the same for everybody, right?"

  "That's correct."

  He glanced around the room again and thought that the system was pretty ingenious. "That's okay, I mainly came here to see the booth or table for a specific guild though."

  "Which one?" asked the man.

  "Trifecta."

  The man in the suit carefully schooled his expression. "May I ask why?"

  "No, not really. They're my own reasons."

  "Ah, I understand. Well, if you're looking for Trifecta, they're in the back corner," he said.

  Max nodded, turned, and began walking deeper into the room. The man in the suit briefly watched him leave before turning and finding another new challenger to give his spiel.